I was asked last week if the sales orders had a promise date - you know, separate from the Ship By date (aka OrderRel.ReqDate). And I said, no, not that I see.
Any logic as to why there is not a promise date? The POs have this.
It seems to make sense.
Need By = when it should get there (Need minus Ship equals transit time)
Promise date = when we said we could send it by, before that ship got stuck in the Suez Canal and ruined our plans (or whatever)
Ship By = when we will actually be able to send it out
Ship By (ReqDate) drives MRP, PO suggestions, etc. So that kind of needs to be moved around in order to keep the suggestions accurate, right?
But then we lose the trace of the date we had originally promised the customer.
Am I alone in this thinking? Or does this make enough sense to try to submit an Idea for it?
Well, if @timshuwy agrees, then I am usually on mighty solid ground.
OK, so agreed, then, it makes perfect sense and it is ridiculous that it is not part of the system?
Sold. I’ll put in the Idea and update this.
Also I saw in one of those posts that it is an existing enhancement request, but I think it is established fact that Development threw all those in the trash when Ideas came along, right?
The way we use the dates is via some calculations
Need By date is the date the customer needs to receive the goods.
ShipBy date is the date we need to have it shipped taking into considerations of DemandDeliveryDays (usual time for a delivery to be made to the customer) of the customer, and depending where it is shipped. as well taking into consideration the production calendar for non-working days.
Whenever a NeedByDate is changed, a calculation is made for the earliest ShipBy date.
We recently received a request to add “Promise Date” to the Sales Order. Would be nice if Epicor would prioritize this but given how slow they are to fix issues…I am not holding my breath for a “Future Consideration”
Note that we did prioritize this feature (idea: ERP-I-1873 with 63 votes) and it is due (safe harbor ) to be released in Kinetic 2024.1. We built in the promise date field in the Order Header, Order Detail and Order Release tables, and they work just like the other dates… if you enter a promise date into the header, then as you add new lines, the promise date is propagated. If you then later change the promise date at the header (or line) then it propagates that change down to all lower level dates that matched.
promise date is NOT populated automatically, although it would be very simple to create a BPM to default it to the scheduled ship date if you like. We chose to make it manually entered since the word “promise” is a stronger word than “Scheduled”. The idea is that once you promise it, that is what you told the customer you could do. I know that in my former employer (25 years ago), when we “promised” the date, we were not allowed to change the promise date without strong reasons, so we would have probably put additional teeth around this field to prohibit changes.
Note also that this aligns with how Purchasing works… you can create a PO with a due date, but the promise date is still needed to be manually entered.
I certainly can’t argue with that - consistency is always the best approach.
This is interesting; I guess I’d have to think about where in the process flow you’d “know” that you were ready to promise the date.
In the broadest sense, the moment you promise it, the ship-by date would (probably?) be the same as the promise date. (Or maybe it’s the Need By date that would be akin to Promise?)
But you may not know the promise date at the moment of order creation.
I still feel like there has to be some way to automate one off of the other. But I very much see the point that the specifics of that might differ from company to company. Point taken.
An Update on this… Here are some screenshots from Kinetic 2024.1 ( Safeharbor statement applies… this is planned to be delivered in 2024.1, but screens might change since everything is not final. )
We have added the promise date to the Header, Line and Release. Just like the Ship By and Need By dates, if you change the promise date, it will push that change to any lines or releases that match this date.
Here is a screenshot of the Order Header. Note that there is a new Promise Date field visible on all three screens. this is displaying the value that is stored in the three tables OrderHed, OrderDtl, and OrderRel. While my example shows all these matching, they do NOT need to match. Note how my customer NEEDS it by 2/29/2024, but my ship by date is 3/13/2024, and my promise date is 3/15/2024. the promise date is purlely to notify you what you told the customer. the system does not take any actionable work off this date.
Do you know when we will get feature release notes for 2024.1? Cloud page says the informational webex isn’t until April, is that the soonest these kinds of changes will be finalized?
) to be released in Kinetic 2024.1. We built in the promise date field in the Order Header, Order Detail and Order Release tables, and they work just like the other dates… if you enter a promise date into the header, then as you add new lines, the promise date is propagated. If you then later change the promise date at the header (or line) then it propagates that change down to all lower level dates that matched.
